Thursday, September 6, 2012

Slackline. Dear S —

But you sit at your window and dream
of that message

when evening comes. Franz Kafka, “An Imperial
Message”

We know poetry and prose married and
what sprang off their discrete union—yes, discrete, as numbers
are—was a hybrid. The poem and the prose did not choose one last
name or even move into the same house. Nonetheless they dare to
speak their love, as the wordy will, and incessantly. Where was I?
Oh, the offspring: The prose poem, which, in Slackline (Hank's Original Loose Gravel Press,
2012, $7), Judy
Roitman's latest chapbook, gets frisky with the epistolary form.

Prose poem missives. Among other
opportunities, they afford a reader a chance to spy. Me and my
lesser angels appreciate that chance, or at least illusion of
overhearing Roitman and her addressees — M — and S — and A —

Spying, or, to be kinder, our
curiosity, is why we read letters (of the famous and not)—the hope
that the correspondence is without the fabrication, fantasy, or lie
of straight-ahead fiction and poetry. If in the process of reading
we're inhale a world view (and more) as is the case in Keats letters
or the correspondence between Bishop and Lowell, all the better. That
said, the epistolary prose poem is a hybrid's hybrid.

The first letter begins, “Dear M —.” And then, “It's
impossible, the walk around the reservoir and now this, a simple
vessel in the kitchen, failed. Foxes all around us, even here,
unrecognizable, the way they sit, watching or move without
acknowledgment, their soft tails.” What a delicious mystery. But
it's over soon and then we're onto “S.”

“Dear S — I tried to stop you but was
stopped at the light.” Each missive (and of course the two I've
quoted are each meatier than what than I served up), pulls in the
reader, who is soon all ajumble, assuming it's true that the human mind
seeks to establish order. The third, also addressed to “S —,” asks, “How come everyone I know seems to
have a name that begin with S —?” There's more than one “S — ”? Or
“M — ”? Abandon the hope of
tidiness in favor of creativity's inconclusiveness.

“H” (on page
22) is informed, in a sort of neighborly manner, “You told me about
the snake but I didn't believe you and now it's become a milk carton
left too long in the trash.” This is one of my favorites. Roitman
conjures complementary memories — “children running up to
you with their glasses on...” “The way you sat on your couch...”
and “that fabulous blouse, the grey one with buttons.”

It is easy, and good, to identify with the
combination of specificity of detail and seeming pulled-from-the-air
reference—the mind at work, with its inherent logic, honed from a
lifetime of dreaming, living, reading.

A third of the chapbook is graced with
woodblock illustrations by Sally F. Pillar. They are charming, work
well with the letters, and my only complaint with Slackline is
the omission of Pillar's bio.

Finally. These prose poems remind me of sonnets, in that, a question is posed in the first sentence
or two, and in some way responded or referred to in the final
sentences. Forms are reinvented all the time. Roitman may have had
that in mind, and whether it was conscious or not, she's a well-read
poet, and thus well-informed by the unconscious.

*The Kafka quotation was my choice and not referenced in the chapbook.

**Judy Roitman lives in Lawrence,
Kansas. When she told me she was visiting New York at the beginning
of the summer I set up a reading with her, Patricia Spears Jones,
Elizabeth Macklin, and myself. We were in the garden at Unnameable
Books in Brooklyn on the Solstice. I mention this in the interest of disclosure,
which is never full, but always necessary.